Tang Soo Do question

[JWLuiza]

It's not that any particular style is more or less effective than another style. It is more about the quality of the instructor teaching you, and the intent with which you train.

Find a good instructor and train hard, and the rest should take care of itself.

What you will find though is that different styles emphasize different aspects of the training at different levels. For example, at an intermediate level a TSD stylist will be a better striker than a judo or mma stylist, while at the same time the judo or mma stylist will be a better grappler / joint manipulator than the TSD stylist. Things will begin to even out as both styles get higher in rank, but keep in mind that there are vast differences in the first few years of training.

I have to disagree with this statement. There are some styles that are just better. If you take two people of the same athletic ability, time, and instructor some styles are just better.

Such as? I'll have to disagree with you. The higher up in any art you get, the more similar they look. Heavyweight kickboxers back in the 70s looked almost the same because of reliance on simple techniques. Chin na looks like intricate jujutsu and goju applications can look like a mix between shotokan with trigger points thrown in. But all in all, it is self defense...

MMA might condition you faster to fight in the ring, but to say any art is better than any other art is just a fallacy because there is no platform that would be agreed upon to compare.

[Justin Treadaway]

Some styles are just more complete. For instance, Sil Lum kung fu (not saying this is the only style) has weapons, punches, kicks, linear, circular, internal, external, take downs, ground fighting, joint locks, rolls, falling, throws etc etc. A lot of styles just teach kicks and punches, some only teach ground etc etc. I am not saying that the teacher and how hard you train has nothing to do with it, if your teacher sucks and you do not train, then no matter what style you take its not going to be effective. When i say some styles are better than others, I am not talking about the philosophies of the style and that part, i am talking about the self defense part. If you want to take a sport oriented style thats fine, if thats what you want. But I am a martial artist for many different reasons: Balance, fitness, the art itself, etc, BUT I also would like to know that I can defend myself against some one attacking me with a knife. I would like to know that if someone swings a stick at me that i have trained to defend myself. I would like to know that i have trained to fight multiple opponents. I am not saying that kung fu is the only good style out there. I am just using that as an example. There are a whole lot of great styles, but imo there are a lot of styles that are lacking on the self defense part.

[kwanjang21532]

Defending yourself is a habit that is comprised of the training tools that are presented by your instructor. TSD is the best art in my opinion, and you can translate that into defense.

V. Noble